A science comic about horses

Horse Sport wrote about a new comic discussing how horses think, and how their owners relate to them:

Scientists, and an increasing number of horse owners, know more than ever about how the mind of a horse works, how to motivate them in training, what they feel, and how to ensure their well-being. However, up-to-date scientific knowledge is not always easily accessible to the horse-owning public who do not read scientific publications or books.

A new approach to science communication has arrived thanks to a Finnish science communication company, Arador Innovations, who authored the non-fiction graphic novel Hevosen mieli. Tiedettä sarjakuvana (The Mind of a Horse. Science Meets Comics) as a new method for public communication of equitation science with the aim of a substantial, positive impact on equine welfare.

Designed for both teenage readers and adults, the book was discussed at the 2025 International Society for Equitation Science conference, as it is believed to be the first non-fiction graphic novel or book-length comic published on the cognition, ethology, or welfare science of any species of animal in Europe. [...]

Well it's certainly a great idea, and let's hope there'll be more like it in the future.

New Tomb Raider miniseries by Casey Gilly appears more faithful to original vision of the early games in series

There's a new Tomb Raider miniseries coming out titled Sacred Artifacts, no doubt intended to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Lara Croft, and judging from what's presented from the interior artwork, it appears more faithful to the original games' premise where Lara would be armed with guns rather than archery. And, it appears less PC. But that doesn't seem to impress the following reviewer at Kabooooom, Matt Morrison, who's also a leading writer for Superhero Hype, who even admits he didn't exactly care for anything Tomb Raider-related years before:

Confession: I’ve never played a Tomb Raider game, nor read many Tomb Raider comics.

I am familiar with the character of Lara Croft, of course, having been a PC Gamer back in the 1990s. And I’m aware there was a reboot that made the franchise into something more like survival horror than an action movie. But I skipped them, as I am more into RPGs than action/survival games. I also skipped the comics as the Top Cow series seemed more concerned with sexy art than solid stories.

He makes it sound like sexy art is literally a bad thing, and Dan Jurgens' writing, from what stories I read, wasn't that bad. Sounds like somebody's regrettably letting his forced politics color his own "reviewing". And if he thinks this new story is acceptable merely because here, there's a woman writing, even that's ridiculous. All that does is suggest he doesn't want to be see ragging on a woman with a sex-positive viewpoint. And if those are the kind of views he upholds, who knows what Mr. Morrison thinks of Wonder Woman, no matter how it's written?

The artwork seen so far (by Antonio diCaprio), contrary to what Morrison's telling, may not be perfect, but is still far from shoddy and watered down like some results of the past decade, which could be horrific and represented a considerable amount of dullness and lack of creativity as a result of the PC approach to writing/drawing/editing. The cover, however, most certainly is dreadful, and anybody who buys this could certainly find a case of trying not to judge a book by its cover. That's the only fault I see so far, in what appears to be a 4-part miniseries. On which note, seriously, I wish again that the industry would turn to paperbacks/hardcovers instead of pamphlets.

Get Your Comic On has a more respectable review of this story, which is supposed to build upon the premise of one of the games produced in 2008, another clue that this time, the writers/artists are building on better source material. On the other hand, Fanlight Zone, while their review is positive, they also say:

I really like the set up that Casey Gilly does with the start of this series because it has been a while since we’ve seen Lara Croft. Her last video game & film were released in 2018, and while there was an animated series released on Netflix in 2024 it’s been relatively quiet for the franchise. There is of course another film coming down the road, but this is the latest content fans have had in a few years.

So here, we have another somebody who doesn't want to get into deeper details of why something produced for Netflix is bad news. Including how it depicted Zip as a gay man in most stereotypical fashion. With all that, is it any wonder pop culture enthusiasts may have lost interest? When a cartoon like this is developed for Netflix, that should be a red flag.

If Dark Horse and Crystal Dynamics, the current owner of the Tomb Raider franchise, have finally shown some willingness to move away from PC mandates, that's good, and while Ms. Gilly may have done a good job, one more thing to hope for is that we don't remain with a situation where only a woman can deliver a better product but a man can't get the same assignments like Dan Jurgens did over a quarter century ago when he wrote the first series for Image/Top Cow. Exactly why men with creative visions should start making story pitches anew and campaign for the challenge of writing figures like Lara Croft again, if it matters. And if men like Mr. Morrison can't appreciate what Tomb Raider was originally built upon, then they shouldn't have anything to do with it at all.

CB Cebulski hires some very disgraceful choices for writing assignments

Comic Book Club Live announced that Marvel and editor C.B Cebulski have hired and re-hired some of the worst writers to litter comicdom in the past quarter century for new writing assignments:

Hot on the heels of DC’s Superman/Spider-Man, Marvel has announced their half of the crossover with the April debuting Spider-Man/Superman #1. And alongside the reveals of the covers, we’ve also got the creative teams for the book, including Geoff Johns delivering his first Marvel work in two decades, and Brad Meltzer writing for Marvel for the first time ever. [...]

Meltzer will write the lead story alongside artist Pepe Larraz, featuring the title characters. In addition, Dan Slott and Marcos Martin will takcle Spider-Man Noir meeting Golden Age Superman, Geoff Johns and Gary Frank send the Super and Spider families against each other, Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman bring on The Mighty Thor and Wonder Woman, Louise Simonson and Todd Nauck pit Steel against Hobgoblin, Joe Kelly and Humberto Ramos cross over Gwen Stacy and Lana Lang, and Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli are back at Miles Morales, and I can’t believe we had him on our live show last night and didn’t know about this. Harumph.

There may have been times when bad writers working at Marvel went over to DC later on (and J. Michael Straczynski certainly did in the late 2000s), but this could be described as the opposite. Either way, it's an utter disgrace that a "novelist" who penned Identity Crisis, one of the most repellent comics minimizing sexual assault and delivering a leftist metaphor for 9-11, is now being hired to work at Marvel on a project, and equally disgraceful that the writer who soiled the Flash, Hawkman and Green Lantern, along with Justice Society, is now returning to work at Marvel, where he also made a shoddy mess of Avengers. Looking at the list, it's certainly quite a Who's Who of horrible, overrated writers, and surely also artists, some who're taking part in a joint project of new team-ups between the Man of Steel and Web-Head. No thanks, I'd rather read the original Spider-Man/Superman teaming from the Bronze Age instead. And how interesting there's at least a dozen variant covers conceived for this project. It does hint they lack faith in anybody taking interest in the brand new special as opposed to the original, if variants are their last trick in the bag.

As for Simonson, there may have once been a time she made a decent scribe, but she's been irrelevant for years now, and it's unlikely she'll deliver anything palatable under Marvel/DC's modern leadership now. Also, is that the original Gwen they're talking about, who was sent to the afterlife in 1973 when the Green Goblin murdered her in Spider-Man? If so, then no matter how you look at this, it clashes with what Tom Brevoort recently said about persuading Joe Quesada they shouldn't revive Gwen. Speaking of which, it may not be surprising if Mary Jane Watson is left out of the new proceedings, but if she is in the story, could anyone be surprised if she gets treated awful?

Based on whom Cebulski's hired, the time couldn't be better to boycott Marvel, and the lineup is certainly an embarrassment.

Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams dead at 68

NBC announced Scott Adams, once famous as cartoonist of the Dilbert comic strip, has finally died of prostate cancer at 68. The leftist press, however, has certainly spared no expense in tearing down on his image, even if there is valid grounds on which to take issue with his MO:

Scott Adams, the "Dilbert" creator whose cartoon was dropped by hundreds of newspapers after he made racist remarks, died months after revealing his diagnosis with prostate cancer, his family said on Tuesday.

Adams told fans in May last year that he'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which had spread to his bones.

He'd recently been in hospice care in Northern California.

"Unfortunately, this isn't good news," his ex-wife Shelly Miles told Adams' fans on YouTube on Tuesday. "He's not with us ... anymore."

In a statement he penned on Jan. 1 and shared by Miles on Tuesday, Adams said he hoped his work brought joy to "lots of lonely people."

"I had an amazing life," Adams said. "I gave it everything I had."

Well I don't deny Dilbert had its values, but did Adams make racist statements against Blacks? What I definitely did think at the time was that he was painting a whole segment of society with far too broad a brush as though they were all the same. His statement was dreadful and went after easy targets, when here, he had a big chance to take issue with the leftist education system and the indoctrination it resulted in. How does it help to merely take issue with the Black community itself as a whole? It does not. And there are other troubling things Adams did, if the following says anything:

If Adams had harbored any far-right theories, he had largely kept those thoughts to himself as his cartoon flourished in popularity.

But then Adams questioned the scope of the Holocaust in 2006 and compared women to "children and the mentally handicapped" in 2011.

Adams in 2023 said Black Americans are members of a “hate group” or a “racist hate group” and said he would no longer “help Black Americans.”

What he said about the WW2 Holocaust and women was uncalled for, and when viewed in the context of those incidents, that's one more reason why his statements about Blacks were uncalled for as well. Did he believe that all research and documentation on the Holocaust was invalid? Did that even sum up what he thought of the Armenian Holocaust during WW1? Who knows? Adams had a chance to acknowledge poor education is a culprit in how people think, resulting in whole generations rejecting Martin Luther King's arguement that people should be judged by color of character, and not color of skin. Yet he took the easy way out, instead of proving he had the courage to confront the really challenging issues. He may have apologized for his statements since, but it's a horrible shame he didn't consider the damage he could end up doing before.

But perhaps the following news at Breitbart could explain why Adams took such a questionable approach and made stupid statements that weren't informed:

Adams had been publicly fighting a metastasized form of prostate cancer. Early reports indicate that the day before his passing, the former atheist converted to Christianity.

Could it be he screwed up in his approach to Blacks, women and the Holocaust because he lacked faith before? Good question. Of course, he's gone now, and so, it's now moot. His conversion to Christianity prior to his death is admirable, and it's to be hoped he showed remorse for what he said about the aforementioned groups, instead of taking issue with the education system, and whether it had anything to do with corrupting any particular segment of society. And Dilbert, for all we know, might regain better status and be admired by more people over time.

Update: Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart talks about how the MSM's smeared Adams soon after his passing.

What's so special about DC's Kingdom Come that it should be adapted to film?

Geek Vibes Nation wrote a list of at least 5 comics stories they believe "deserve" a movie adaptation, and one of those is Mark Waid's Kingdom Come, the miniseries built upon a dark angle:

Written by Mark Waid with breathtaking painted art by Alex Ross, Kingdom Come is a four-issue miniseries that presents a future where the classic heroes have retired, giving way to a new generation of reckless, violent metahumans with no regard for human life. When tragedy strikes, an aged Superman emerges from exile to restore order, leading to a clash between old ideals and new chaos.

The story explores profound themes like legacy, morality, the role of heroes in society, and the dangers of unchecked power. Iconic moments include Superman’s return in a redesigned suit, epic battles involving the Justice League, Wonder Woman, and even Captain Marvel (Shazam), and a climactic confrontation with a brainwashed Captain Marvel orchestrated by Lex Luthor’s Mankind Liberation Front.

Why it deserves a live-action film: In the current DC Universe reboot under James Gunn, Kingdom Come could serve as a mature, standalone Elseworlds tale or a future-set epic. Its stunning visuals—thanks to Ross’s hyper-realistic style—would translate beautifully to CGI-heavy spectacle, while the generational conflict mirrors real-world debates. Imagine veteran actors portraying older heroes alongside younger stars as the new guard. No full live-action adaptation exists yet, making this a prime candidate for a prestige superhero film that balances action with philosophical depth.

Oh, so Gunn's new takes on the DCU are their excuse? Sorry, this is simply tasteless, and only regurgitates the cliches that set mainstream comicdom on the path to ruin in the 1990s. They don't clearly mention that the story built on the death of Lois Lane, and Superman all but quits the crimefighting business as a result. Seeing how such themes were cliched to death over the past decades, that's why I don't consider the story philosophical, let alone having much depth. Some could even argue the clash with a brainwashed Billy Batson preceded some of Marvel's stories where heroes clash with each other too more than villains. And while I don't deny Ross is a talented artist, the way they describe his style is all to reminiscent of why the medium's been brought down so badly - too much fuss about the supposed need for "realism". Must I point out one of my favorite Marvel books is the 1988-98 Excalibur, which had quite a few surreal moments? Its first half was certainly pretty good in that regard, and I think Alan Davis was a very talented artist with his cartoonish designs back then. Hence, I wish they'd quit implying "realistic" is what makes a fictional story great.

The point is, whether a story is realistic or surrealistic, both will only truly work if there's merit, and it isn't heavy-handed. Stories like Kingdom Come really went out of their way with the darkness, and the damage its done to practically any and all parts of the entertainment industry have long taken a toll, and no telling if the medium will ever move away from it. Also, what makes a story with a premise like Kingdom Come's far more important than a story where say, there's marriage or even a reunion leading to resumption of one? Modern PC has really led to a situation where it's near impossible to write up a plausible marriage premise between men and women, let alone appreciate the idea at all, and it's been setting a very unhealthy example for years now, with no telling if the situation will ever improve. And then we wonder why the Spider-marriage was destroyed. Kingdom Come isn't a good wellspring for a movie at all.

"Comics accurate" costumes don't guarantee a movie will be successful

Or that they're based on the traditional designs of decades past. The Inquirer wrote about the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday film, which appears to add the X-Men to the Marvel film machine:

When I read comic books, I prefer issues drawn and written by proven artists with an excellent track record. I approach the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with the same level of scrutiny. Let’s be honest: after some recent experimental phases, we’ve all been longing for that “all-time great story” feeling to return. On January 6, 2026, Marvel Studios didn’t just release a trailer; they delivered a seismic shift with the third teaser for ‘Avengers: Doomsday.’ This teaser alone blows out of the water every other teaser that came before it. This hits hard!

Once I saw this specific teaser, I felt goosebumps because I knew when things were about to change for the better. And if only they had done this long ago, but who are we to bring that point up or even complain? What matters is that finally, and I will be using that adverb a few more times throughout my newest pop culture piece because it is about damn time, they showcase what a true (Jim Lee era) X-Man looks like (the classic blue and yellow costume) and embrace their comic book origins from that specific timeline (early ’90s) in Marvel Comics. It is a sight to behold no matter how fleeting it was for me to see it.

If the earlier teasers featuring the returns of Chris Evans as “Captain America” and Chris Hemsworth as “Thor” were just the appetizers, this X-Men-centric reveal is the main course we’ve been craving since Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019. Finally, they are pulling the trigger, incorporating the best of the X-Men into the fold, and are giving what the longtime fans have been clamoring for, which is to have the X-Men as part of the MCU, because, let us all be honest here with the situation, to have no mutants in the MCU is as dumb as a box of rocks. It is silly, illogical, and senseless because the X-Men are one of the biggest reasons why Marvel Comics became the titans they are in the comic book industry, and why adapting comic book characters from Marvel Comics to the big screen became a thing in the first place.

Umm, even Spider-Man is one of the reasons why Marvel once became a titan...but the columnist is oblivious to how they fell since the turn of the century, dragging their creations into increasingly pointless directions that only served as political statements with no entertainment value involved. He's also oblivious to how Lee watered down his art style in the past decade for the sake of woke points. And the part about the blue and yellow outfits is confusing, because wasn't that the original outfits the first 5 X-Men had in the Silver Age? Within a few years, the artists were drawing them distinctive outfits instead, so I'm not sure what the columnist is lecturing us about here.

And I for one am not clamoring for the X-Men to be incorporated into the Marvel movieverse proper after all the wokeness that ensued in the past several years. Unfortunately, they're awfully late, and the X-Men's addition alone does not a talented movie make. Whether the costumes are verbatim to what was seen in comics in any era is moot. And, how isn't it silly and illogical to force political correctness upon the films that only proves divisive, as the 4th Thor movie did?

Some would-be entertainment writers sure know how to obscure the crucial issues of merit. This puff piece from the Inquirer is no different.

Very old Superman issue that once belonged to Nicholas Cage sells for $15 million

We see more auctioneering mishmash at work with a rare back issue of Action Comics' premiere, which the BBC says sold for a colossal $15 million:

A rare copy of the 1938 comic that introduced Superman to the world has sold to an anonymous collector for $15m (£11.2m).

The private sale of the Action Comics No 1 copy - once stolen from actor Nicolas Cage's home and returned to him over a decade later - was announced on Friday.

The previous record for the sale of a comic book was set in November, when a pristine Superman No 1 fetched $9.12m at auction. Both sales far exceed the original 10-cent price tags - or around $2.25 in today's money.

Yup, as expected, we've crossed the previous record by a considerable margin. And while it was utterly wrong for the criminal to burglarize the back issue from Cage's estate, it's still regrettable we have another example of something being sold anonymously on the market to be kept buried in vaults for eternity instead of going to a museum. There's a lot of potential in setting up a whole exhibition for various back issues of decades past for the public to see, yet everything goes in a cyclical pattern on the market instead.

Soon enough, we'll be hearing that these back issues sold for $20-30 million, and then it'll all become particularly pointless and silly. And neither the mainsteam nor specialty press will question if the speculator market's setting a good example.

Some very sad revelations about the mindset of Tony Bedard

There's a comics writer and video game developer named Tony Bedard who began in the former business over 3 decades ago, and in recent years, has revealed quite a leftist mindset, with the following discovery on Supergirl Comic Box Commentary from 16 years ago being quite a telling example. It appears Bedard wrote the following scene into the 2nd series with the title R.E.B.E.L.S that ran during 2009-11:

Again, Captain Comet acts as the naysayer, stating that plopping Rann in the sector is like pouring gas on a fire (he actually compares it to dropping Israel onto Palestine). Comet knows that some pushback is going to happen from everyone else in the area.

I like how Comet is at least not walking in lockstep with Dox.

Even long before October 7, 2023, this was still repugnant enough, and forcing it onto a character who's supposed to be a good guy is additionally offensive. That's very hostile to Israel, and all this in comics originally developed by Israeli descendants like Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. I've got a feeling Bedard is well aware of the Israeli/Jewish connections of comicdom during the Golden Age, another reason why this is so repellent, and makes a total waste of Starfire's role in the series. He doesn't even offer any concrete evidence there was ever an Arab/Islamic country named "palestine", and no point's made about how it was a name the Roman empire gave to Israel, all to humiliate it. Also note that this comic was published at the time Dan DiDio was in charge of DC, which says quite a bit about what his politics most likely were, along with plenty of other employees there at the time. Marvel also has their share of anti-Israel propaganda, and some smaller publishers undoubtably do too, and they've probably never shown any remorse for it, nor any regrets for how it slaps the memory of Jewish creators in the face.

I may have read a few of Bedard's early efforts, and those from independents may have been okay, but since then, as this mainstream comic makes clear, he's lost his moral compass, and injected bottom of the barrel political allusions into his scripts. He even sided with the position Hal Jordan's worthless because in Bedard's opinion, Hal's fearless rendition literally makes him unrelatable, all without considering Hal's a fictional character, and doesn't explain clearly how Kyle Rayner's being written with any kind of fear automatically translates to "talented" writing. Quite a sellout indeed.

More recently, while Bedard doesn't seem to write much on X, he posted the following, which is telling of where he's also gone since:

As his trans daughter struggles, a father pushes past his prejudice. 'It was like a wake-up.' https://t.co/plfjOC5i3b via @nbcnews

— Tony Bedard (@TonyBedard) April 12, 2024

So parents are supposed to literally accept that their children live in delusionary fantasies, and be ashamed of the sex they were born as? And I assume Bedard also believes all but Islamists are required to conform to the LGBT ideology, but not the other way around? It's embarrassingly bad. I hesitate to think what his work in video games could be like, and wonder if he's trying to be the Gerry Conway of the computer game industry? Bedard certainly is proving to be another example of why realists have to separate the art from the artist.

As of now, I have no idea if he's ever expressed any regrets over the stealth propaganda he put into R.E.B.E.L.S during 2010, and if he hasn't, I'd say he'd do well to retire from the profession, and I can't buy what independent comics he may have produced since if he doesn't apologize for stuffing propaganda hurtful to Israel and victims of Islamofascism into his writings.

The history of a now 50-year-old specialty store in Santa Cruz

Good Times wrote a whole article about Atlantis Fantasyworld, one of the oldest USA specialty stores, located in Santa Cruz, whose owner Joe Ferrara once knew comics writer Mike Friedrich, and they discussed, in example, how the store's been able to last as long as it has for nearly 5 decades:

Approaching its 50th anniversary, I sat down with owner Joe Ferrara to chronicle how a personal collection grew into a half-century institution—and to understand the quieter values that allowed it to outlast earthquakes, recessions, and the digital revolution while so many brick-and-mortar stores disappeared.

Founded in 1976, Atlantis is stocked with comics, graphic novels, toys, magazines, art books, and collectibles. Its longevity isn’t nostalgia alone.

It’s consistency, care, and an unshakable belief that stories matter.

In that case, I hope he focuses more attention on independent/creator owned products, because after the way DC/Marvel went since the turn of the century with divisive politics and woke directions, it'd be better to lavish some more focus on creator-owned stories and judge which are the best ones for promotion.

According to January 2025 retailer reports, there are between 2,000 and 3,000 specialty comic shops in North America. Even broader business directories count fewer than 4,000 stores nationwide—a figure that includes “hybrids” that act primarily as game centers or tournament venues rather than dedicated comic bookstores. No other California shop matches Atlantis’s nearly 50 years under the same ownership—a true survivor in a landscape where many independents have closed.

To be sure, that's because they relied far too heavily on modern DC/Marvel output, though that's obviously not the only reason any stores could've gone out of business. There's also, as I'm well aware, problems with rent prices going up. Of course, regarding the comics themselves, when divisive politics are shoved into the pages as viciously as they were since the turn of the century, that too is dispiriting.

Ferrara’s love of comics was born from a childhood obsession that initially worried his mother.

“I loved comics as a kid,” he recalls. “My mom complained to the nuns, ‘He only wants to read comics.’ And God bless them, the nuns of the ’50s didn’t say no. They said, ‘Mrs. Ferrara, he’s reading.’”

What could have been brushed aside became literacy, curiosity, and eventually a life’s work. Comics weren’t a phase. They were a language.

That's certainly amazing the Catholic representatives he studied under recognized the medium in itself is valid. It's just the content and suitability level at a young age that's in question. Of course, today that might've changed in ways that aren't for the better, sadly, and in the past decade, it was certainly evident some of the worst forms of censorship were being promoted by leftists who didn't uphold the values of their predecessors.

Ferrara’s passion for comics was reignited in college by his roommate Mike Friedrich, who went on to write for Marvel and DC on titles such as Spider-Man and Batman. By the time Ferrara moved to Santa Cruz in 1976, he’d amassed more than 6,000 comics.

The turning point came during a dinner at his mother’s house.

“My mom, between bites, says, ‘He’ll probably open his own store,’” Ferrara remembers. “Bang. That did it. That was like a tuning fork. My body just started vibrating.”

And it's great he wanted to work as a salesman for the medium. Of course, while I appreciate that he'd owned plenty of back issues at the time, I'd be even happier if he agreed the medium's got to make the shift to formats like paperback/hardcover, because pamphlets have long become too expensive in over 20 years, and the way DC/Marvel rely so heavily upon crossovers has worsened the situation, regardless of whether you have to read all connecting issues to understand the whole. Somebody's got to make clear within sales management itself that this cannot go on, no matter how "clever" they might claim it all is.

Atlantis holds a unique place in Santa Cruz film history as the comic store featured in The Lost Boys. The original location at 707 Pacific Ave. was transformed by director Joel Schumacher’s crew to create the illusion that the shop sat on the Boardwalk. They built a wall in the gutter, placed Laughing Sal in front of it, and shot at an angle that hid the actual street—even removing a tree from the beach in post-production.

Seriously, considering Schumacher was such a wokester in his own way, one who brought the live action Batman films of the times down to shoddy levels, that's why I'm really not impressed to know this. And it's just as troubling to know the following:

The Lost Boys connection runs deeper than souvenirs. DC Comics published a six-issue sequel series, written by Tim Seeley, based on what was supposed to be the next film. Ferrara invited Seeley to the store’s 40th anniversary, where he signed the first two issues. When Seeley went home and finished writing the series, he included a tribute: in the final issue, the vampires kill Joe Ferrara.

“I’m dead in the comics,” Ferrara grins. When Atlantis sells out of those issues, they’re gone—the series is out of print.

In that case, is this miniseries really some massive success? Obviously not, and if I were in Ferrara's position, I'd be repelled that they put me in a horror-thriller setting that awful. That aside, Schumacher was such an overrated director in his time, and his take on any kind of comics, Batman or anything else, did no favors for the medium.

While the global comic book market continues to expand into a multi-billion dollar industry driven by manga and digital access, brick-and-mortar specialty shops like Atlantis navigate distinct pressures. Many diversify with events and tournaments to thrive, but Atlantis has stayed true to its roots as a story-centered bookstore. Its genre-racking and welcoming vibe proves that heartfelt, innovative retail can remain a cultural anchor amid broader industry evolution.

This may be a cliche, but if manga's the big deal, are USA comics by contrast such a success if manga's surpassed them in popularity? That said, it is impressive the specialty store's stuck by its core mission, and not tried to water down the whole purpose they got into the business for. They also bring up a former publisher who proved a letdown in the long run:

Ferrara’s longevity has earned him deep respect across the industry. Paul Levitz, who spent 47 years at DC Comics and served as its president from 2002 to 2009, calls Ferrara a pioneer. Levitz played a central role in shaping modern comics publishing, helping hire influential creators like Alan Moore and building the Direct Market system that made independent comic bookshops financially viable in the first place.

“Joe Ferrara has been a stellar example of the independent comic shop owner almost from the beginning of comic shops in America,” Levitz says. “He’s led the recognition of successful shops, and been a gentle godfather to the growth of our industry.”

And Levitz became a huge disappointment over time, to the point where I seriously doubt he ever got into the business because he cared about the creations he got assignments to write.

Industry admiration has also taken formal shape. Atlantis Fantasyworld won the Eisner Award for Best Comic Shop in 1996, one of the highest honors in comics retail. The award was created by Will Eisner, widely regarded as the father of the graphic novel, to encourage professionalism and elevate standards across the industry.

“His intention was that comic book retailers would become more professional,” Ferrara says. “Not just being like, you know, indoor flea market guys.”

Well I'm not sure if all became as professional as Eisner must've hoped, nor did standards improve, based on where they've gotten to now. At this point, it's much more likely they could turn against him for publishing his last GN, The Plot. And the Eisner awards, IIRC, even ended up going to comics that didn't deserve it, like Identity Crisis, and there were other troubling choices made by the panel of judges for the ceremony. That the Eisner awards went down in quality is, predictably, not dwelled upon here. The writer even made the mistake of referencing a now disgraced author who did no favors for the medium in the long run:

Beyond comics, Ferrara’s long-standing advocacy for prostate cancer awareness earned him the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award, which honors individuals who have contributed to the comics community and public good beyond business success. Past recipients include science-fiction author Robert Heinlein, writer Neil Gaiman, and Jeannie Schulz, who has overseen and protected the legacy of her late husband, Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz.

Did they have to put somebody whose reputation and career have since plummeted due to the sexual assault allegations against him into this article? I do wonder if Ferrara's store and other business associates ever had figures like Mike Baron and Chuck Dixon as recipients? If not, that's decidedly a flaw.

Inspired by how breast cancer awareness made pink a universal symbol of solidarity, Ferrara worked to bring the same visibility to prostate cancer through the color blue. He convinced Marvel to create special blue-themed variant covers for awareness campaigns—an industry first that amplified life-saving messages nationwide. IDW Publishing followed suit, running ads inside their comics. This pioneering advocacy solidified blue as the cause’s symbol within the medium. At Comic-Con, Bob Clampett’s daughter Ruth presented Ferrara with the award that bears her father’s name.

While the subject of cancer is a valid concern, what good does it do to promote awareness through variant covers, which has made a joke out of the mainstream in particular, since it only obscured how the stories became monumentally awful? Anybody who's going to push variant covers at the expense of the interiors is undermining the belief in need for merit.

The staff reflects the shop’s ethos: everyone belongs here. Atlantis has always been a place where all are welcome—no gatekeeping, no judgment, just a shared love of stories.

“If you hire the right people, you don’t have to worry,” Joe says. “They care.”

Well I sure hope they don't take a naive view of certain ideologies, including how communism's made such a troubling presence in USA society these days. I think it's great Ferrara's been able to keep the store running as successfully as he has for 50 years, but when the talk of variant covers comes up, that can be a telling clue something's wrong with the approach, and when they don't discuss any seriously challenging issues involved, that only dampens the impact of the article, along with what the store's meant to be about. Retail specialists need to consider that if they want anything to improve, they certainly can't overlook what went wrong with the mainstream.